10 Things Your Holiday Marketing Data Should Have Shown You

The lesser-known underbelly of marketing departments is that they’re constantly dealing with a flood of data. The problem is that project management doesn’t allow for enough time to process and act on the data. What you’re left with then is an entire department that’s spent sometimes upwards of a month on a campaign that now doesn’t have the time to go back and see if that campaign was even effective.

This is probably what your marketing department is dealing with right now when it comes to the incoming data from your holiday marketing campaigns. Because most of you reading this post will be strapped for time, I’ve take the liberty of listing the top ten things you should be scanning when reviewing your data. Share this list with your team ahead of time and ask them all to run their own assessment of the results. This way when you meet you’re already ahead of the game and are using your time effectively to evaluate specific results rather than sifting through a pile of data, trying to make sense of it.

Traffic Patterns
Do a comprehensive check to see what your traffic looked like for the holiday season, when it spiked versus when you expected it to spike in correlation with the launch of any campaigns. Also compare that data to the year before and be sure to check social shares and social intelligence along with traffic hits and email marketing yields. You’re going to want a full picture see where your audience was at during this time.

Newsletter Subscriptions
Assuming you had decent traffic patterns, you should have seen an increase in newsletter subscriptions this time of year. Ask yourself how many new subscribers you gained and how many you lost, compared to what the expectation was. Also set this against last year’s data to gather a fuller picture of how your company is progressing on a larger level.

Conversion Rates
This is a broad question that really needs to start by looking at where and how you want people to convert. Typically, it’s with sales. You may need to check the stats with another department, but you’re going to want to see how well the company did in sales for the end of the year – and again, compare that with the year prior and the quarter as a whole. Pair the numbers you’re looking at with the round of campaign and the type of campaign. So, ask yourself a question like “Was this part of the first holiday exclusive offer, or the second,” and “Do we know if this conversion came from the landing page we linked to in the email campaign or did it come from somewhere else?” Typically, you should have had unique identifying trackers on each offer and destination point.

Brick and Mortar
Amazon is now launching brick and mortar stores after heralded success with online shopping. I’m confident they’ll be running assessments on both fronts – online and storefronts. Your company should be doing the same if you’re in retail. Any data you reap should have an equal piece of data that reflects in-person shopping. This will paint a picture that shouldn’t have too much of a discrepancy in figures.